Study Calls on Pediatricians to Ask Parents About Guns While Ignoring Pools and Poisons

Gun owners have become the prime target of lawmakers and activists alike, but now even the medical field has tried to demonize gun owners while ignoring the bigger dangers that face children in the home.

A new study by the American Association of Pediatrics has reported that 7,391 children were hospitalized for gunshot wounds in the U.S. in 2009 and of those, 1,000 were under the age of 15.

More than half of these injuries were from assaults and not from accidentally finding a gun in the home. What the report does not admit is that while 1,000 under the age of 15 were hospitalized for gun shot wounds, 5,000 children in the same age group are hospitalized annually because of backyard pools and drownings.

According to the CDC there are over 100,000 children who are hospitalized every year due to poisoning.

And while many homes are full of cleaning chemicals and have swimming pools, neither is mentioned in the constitution as rights granted to the people.

It is no doubt that every gun owner should be responsible for making sure any firearm is kept safe and away from curious little hands, but with so many attacks against 2nd amendment rights this study smells more like another tactic for anti-gunners to expand more gun control.

One might think that the American Association of Pediatrics is neutral in the gun debate and this new study has only prompted them to ask gun owners to be more careful. But gun owners are not being asked about their guns for safety reasons alone. There is something more anti-gun going on.

“The safest home for a child is a home without guns,” the report concludes, “and if there is a gun in the home, it must be stored unloaded and locked, with the ammunition locked separately.”

So the safest home is one without any guns? Even though guns are not even close to the number one reason for children being injured or killed in the home, how can it be said the a child is safer in a home without a gun unless facts and statistics are ignored in favor of supporting an agenda that makes gun owners the evil party.

Does this take into account the number of defensive gun uses we have reported in which children’s lives have been saved because of a gun owner who shot or scared off an intruder with a firearm?

While every gun owner should take care to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands, just as much care should be put into teaching children gun safety and a proper respect for firearms. Remember, there was a time when school’s used to actually train children how to shoot and maintain firearms. Now they are punished for even talking about them.